Why Americans Love Summertime Movies

There are only so many ways to beat the heat during the dog days of summer, and slipping into a chilly movie theater for a feel-good flick is one of the best.

Summer, writes New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis, is "our season of collective moviegoing happiness." While Hollywood rolls out its cerebral, thought-provoking best during what has come to be known as Oscar season, American moviegoers seem to be in agreement that summer movies should be lighthearted, fun, action-packed, and family friendly.

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A summer children's show at a movie theater during the 1950s.

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The first U.S. movie theater, the Nickelodeon, opened in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1905. But it wasn't until two decades later, in 1925, that a revolutionary invention really made the summer blockbuster phenomenon possible. On Memorial Day weekend that year, the Rivoli Theater in Times Square, New York, became the first commercial building with air-conditioning. It was a luxury most people didn't have in their homes at the time.

Will Oremus at Slate writes that people have been piling "into air-conditioned movie theaters on hot summer days" ever since then, "giving rise to the summer blockbuster."

The term "blockbuster" entered the American lexicon during World War II, when news outlets used the word to describe bombs that leveled entire blocks of streets. (The fact that it became a descriptor for wildly successful films is somewhat odd given that a "box-office bomb" is quite the opposite!) In the summer of 1975, Steven Spielberg's Jaws became the first true blockbuster—a commercial success and cultural phenomenon, according to Tom Shone's 2004 book Blockbuster: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Summer.

Since then, America's iconic summer blockbusters have included Alien (1979), E.T. (1982), Top Gun (1986), and The Lion King (1994). According to the Tribune Media Wire, the highest grossing summer movie of all time is 1977's Star Wars. This summer's highest grossing film, Finding Dory, has earned $722 million globally and nabbed the title of the country's highest-grossing animated film of all time.

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